Mike Zielinski, also known as Zeke, offers his entertaining and insightful take on politics, sports and topical events. Zeke has been a prolific and creative sports columnist, news columnist, blogger and wordsmith with a lifelong love affair with prose.

Monthly Archives: January 2013

So much for the Niners and the Ravens, Colin Kaepernick and Joe Flacco, the Harbaugh Brothers (the most famous set of siblings since the Smith Brothers were coughing up a lung), Ray Lewis and deer antler spray/murder rap.

This Super Bowl is all about Beyonce.

With the whole world tingling with goose bumps, Beyonce opened her Super Bowl press conference today with a rousing two minute live rendition of The Star Spangled Banner, followed by an admission that she did indeed use a pre-recorded track while singing the anthem at Obama’s inauguration and a promise that she will be singing live at halftime Sunday.

Three observations:

When did the universe become so utterly superficial that halftime performers hold press conferences? When I was playing high school football, our band didn’t hold pregame press conferences. They had to save their breath to blow their trumpets and trombones.

What will all the little minds in the world do now to fill their empty heads now that the did she or didn’t she lip sync debate is over?

How is it that Beyonce has a bigger butt than any of the Super Bowl linemen? Steroids? Oodles of potato chips?

Suddenly we have some news that actually is more exciting than watching a yacht race.

Bipartisanship and immigration reform really are riding in tandem these days.

Next thing you know lions and lambs will be dancing duets.

And you thought this week was all about Super Bowl hype and reports that A-Rod gobbled PEDs like they were PEZ.

First a bipartisan group of senators that included marquee neon names like McCain, Rubio and Schumer cobbled together a comprehensive immigration reform.

Then today in Las Vegas, President Obama placed a wager on the Super Bowl and then made a crucial tactical shift as he embraced the senators’ plan.

Indeed, you could have knocked over a craps dealer with one chip after Obama failed to unveil a more liberal approach and didn’t call for a faster and more straightforward path to citizenship for undocumented workers and students,

The president said the pathway to citizenship he would create would require those here illegally to go the back of the line behind legal applicants.

Sounds fair. Everybody hates it when somebody jumps in front of the line, which frequently triggers a heated debate on gun control.

Presidents are required, by job description, to give an inaugural address standing out in the cold so we can examine the plumes of their breath.

For the most part, inaugurals aren’t memorable speeches. Especially when it’s a president’s second term and the juice has disappeared like a blown transformer.

Obama’s second inaugural address was a blatant call to liberalism.

The gloves are off now that he doesn’t have to enter the squared circle with the ballot box again.

Obama delivered a percussive defense of liberalism and the obligations of citizenship — making rights more real than Cheez Whiz, helping more Americans work up to the middle class, and caring for those who can’t – red flag alert: or won’t — care for themselves.

There should have been a rainbow in the sky above him, but apparently Obama isn’t that well connected with Mother Nature even though he did mention climate change.

This was the rainbow address, a tribute to the diversity of America in which he included gay rights firmly in the civil rights portfolio.

In so doing, he passionately defended the social safety net that was the core of his reelection campaign.

After all, Obama is the Pied Piper of the needy.

He harped on the founding vision of the country, hijacking that theme from the conservatives and boiling over Tea Party kettles.

Obama conveyed the animating principles of the U.S. as not merely limited government but a balance between freedom from government and the need for an effective government.

His speech was overpopulated with uplifting rhetoric and under-populated with specifics.

In a concession to his Republican adversaries and a brief fling with bipartisanship, he interrupted his liberal narrative with a brief admission that we must reduce the cost of health care and the size of the deficit.

Granted, Obama’s new mandate in this second go-round is achieving bipartisanship through force, not conciliation.

With two presidential election wins under his belt, the commander in chief has a defiant liberal swagger.

It’s all about brotherly love. A love that only brothers can fathom. A love that is somewhat less complicated than gnashing our bicuspids over the meaning of life and what comes after death.

Blood is as thick as a medical school textbook. Thick as the Beijing phonebook. You can look it up.

I once threw six darts, and four of them stuck, at one of my brothers on Christmas Eve in a scoring disagreement. My mom was not pleased.

I once gave another brother a bloody nose in a disagreement over a misplaced typewriter cover. Little did we know then that typewriters soon would become as past tense as the Joe Louis left hook I nailed my brother with.

Now, oh brother, are we gonna have a Super Bowl. Jim Harbaugh will lead his San Francisco 49ers against John Harbaugh’s Baltimore Ravens.

Why the hell is this Super Bowl in New Orleans?

It definitely should be in Philly, the City of Brotherly Love.

It’s gonna be one intense family affair.

A game that will make all of us brothers in arms.

Except for those who were an only child or stuck with just sisters.

Then again, those folks already know that life is as unfair as a casino.

First of all, only about 2.7 people in America gave a whit about the Tour de France until Lance Armstrong won a zillion of them in a row despite almost dying from cancer.

Did I think the dude was blood doping and stuffing his sculpted body with EPO and testosterone?

Of course.

All elite cyclists had to if they wanted to be competitive. How else could they pedal up and down mountains day after day at warp speed and still have enough energy to ask themselves at night why they didn’t take up motorcycling racing instead.